Title: The heart of the pearl shell: the mythological dimension of Foi socialityAuthor: Weiner, James FPublished: University of California Press, 1988Subjects: AnthropologyPublisher's Description: For the Foi people who live on the edge of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea, the flow of pearl shells is the "heart" of their social life. The pearl shell is the exchange item that mediates the creation of their most important sexual and social roles. The Heart of the Pearl Shell analyzes a . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Making modern mothers: ethics and family planning in urban GreeceAuthor: Paxson, Heather 1968-Published: University of California Press, 2004Subjects: Gender Studies | Sociology | Anthropology | AnthropologyPublisher's Description: In Greece, women speak of mothering as "within the nature" of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper indi . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Wage, trade, and exchange in Melanesia: a Manus society in the modern stateAuthor: Carrier, James GPublished: University of California Press, 1989Subjects: AnthropologyPublisher's Description: Ponam Island, a small community in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, is the subject of this innovative study. The authors extend the criticism within anthropology of ethnographies that attempt to analyze village communities without reference to the nations of which they are a part, and that equate t . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Earthly bodies, magical selves: contemporary pagans and the search for communityAuthor: Pike, Sarah M 1959-Published: University of California Press, 2001Subjects: Religion | AnthropologyPublisher's Description: Recent decades have seen a revival of paganism, and every summer people gather across the United States to celebrate this increasingly popular religion. Sarah Pike's engrossing ethnography is the outcome of five years attending neo-pagan festivals, interviewing participants, and sometimes taking par . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Language, charisma, and creativity: the ritual life of a religious movementAuthor: Csordas, Thomas JPublished: University of California Press, 1997Subjects: Anthropology | ChristianityPublisher's Description: Thomas Csordas's eloquent analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, part of the contemporary cultural and media phenomenon known as conservative Christianity, embraces one of the primary tasks of anthropology: to stimulate critical reflection by making the exotic seem familiar and the familiar a . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: The Ethnography of readingAuthor: Boyarin, JonathanPublished: University of California Press, 1993Subjects: Anthropology | LiteraturePublisher's Description: Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, now finally receives its due in these groundbreaking essays by a distinguished group of anthropologists and literary scholars.The essays move well beyond the simple ru . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: The short, swift time of gods on earth: the Hohokam chroniclesAuthor: Bahr, Donald MPublished: University of California Press, 1994Subjects: Anthropology | Anthropology | Folklore and MythologyPublisher's Description: In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Kinship with strangers: adoption and interpretations of kinship in American cultureAuthor: Modell, Judith Schachter 1941-Published: University of California Press, 1994Subjects: Anthropology | SociologyPublisher's Description: Adoption challenges our understanding of the core symbols of kinship in American culture - birth, biology, and blood. Through the lens of anthropological theory, Judith Modell examines these symbols and the way they affect people who experience the "fictive" kinship of adoption. Her findings are tim . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Masquerade politics: explorations in the structure of urban cultural movementsAuthor: Cohen, AbnerPublished: University of California Press, 1993Subjects: Anthropology | PoliticsPublisher's Description: Carnival, that image of sensuous frivolity, is shown by Abner Cohen to be a masquerade for the dynamic relations between culture and politics. His masterful study details the transformation of a local, polyethnic London fair to a massive, exclusively West Indian carnival, known as "Europe's biggest . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: The life of the law: anthropological projectsAuthor: Nader, LauraPublished: University of California Press, 2002Subjects: Anthropology | LawPublisher's Description: Laura Nader, an instrumental figure in the development of the field of legal anthropology, investigates an issue of vital importance for our time: the role of the law in the struggle for social and economic justice. In this book she gives an overview of the history of legal anthropology and at the s . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: Grateful prey: Rock Cree human-animal relationshipsAuthor: Brightman, Robert Alain 1950-Published: University of California Press, 1993Subjects: Anthropology | Anthropology | United States History | ReligionPublisher's Description: The interaction between religious beliefs and hunting practices among the Asiniskawidiniwak or Rock Crees of northern Manitoba is the focus of Robert Brightman's detailed study. This foraging society, he says, bases aspects of its hunting and trapping largely on what we call "religious" conceptions. . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: The wrestler's body: identity and ideology in north IndiaAuthor: Alter, Joseph SPublished: University of California Press, 1992Subjects: Anthropology | South AsiaPublisher's Description: The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: War and society in ancient MesoAmericaAuthor: Hassig, Ross 1945-Published: University of California Press, 1992Subjects: Anthropology | Latin American HistoryPublisher's Description: In this study of warfare in ancient Mesoamerica, Ross Hassig offers new insight into three thousand years of Mesoamerican history, from roughly 1500 B.C. to the Spanish conquest. He examines the methods, purposes, and values of warfare as practiced by the major pre-Columbian societies and shows how . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of charismatic healingAuthor: Csordas, Thomas JPublished: University of California Press, 1997Subjects: Anthropology | Religion | PhilosophyPublisher's Description: How does religious healing work, if indeed it does? In this study of the contemporary North American movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Thomas Csordas investigates the healing practices of a modern religious movement to provide a rich cultural analysis of the healing experience. Thi . . . [more]Similar Items

Title: History and tradition in Melanesian anthropologyAuthor: Carrier, James GPublished: University of California Press, 1992Subjects: Anthropology | East Asia OtherPublisher's Description: Melanesian societies, like village societies in many parts of the world, are frequently portrayed as existing in a timeless, traditional present. These seven original essays offer an alternative view, one showing that historical evidence can and must inform our understanding of contemporary cultures . . . [more]Similar Items